Tom Adair, Scotsman
'An exceptional first novel ... This book should win prizes ... [Wagner] entertains - a writer incapable, it seems, of being drab.'
Viv Groskop, Eve Magazine
`If, like me, you enjoy a tale that gives you goosebumps, you'll love this ... Mysterious and lyrical, it's a must-read.'
Sarah Bakewell, TLS
'As the tension in Janet's relationship with her brother develops, the reader feels seized too ... Written with impressive conviction and exerts real power.'
Pamela Norris, Literary Review
`Poetic, passionate and poised in the hinterland between fantasy and real life ... A novel that combines suspense with the pleasure of good writing.'
Book Description
The eagerly awaited first novel by the Literary Editor of The Times
Sunday Times
'Wagner's intelligent, lyrical prose ... draws the reader into the predicament of her damaged protagonists as they hurtle towards a tragic discovery.'
Guardian
'The almost gothic frisson it imparts to the reader is acheived by the very careful drip-dripping of taboos.'
Independent on Sunday
'The characters are finely wrought ... [in] this strange tale of spiritual homecoming.'
Sunday Business Post
'A dark and twisted tale woven out of the blackest, most fobidding myths and fairy tales ... chilling and unsettling.'
Irish Times
'Momentum and intensity build so that the unnerving denouement, when it comes, seems almost inevitable ... A searing debut novel.'
Product Description
Janet grew up with her father; her mother, she was always told, died when she was three. Her father's stories were of her mother's beauty, their early love - tales stopping short of tragedy. But now, living an ocean away from her childhood home, she unexpectedly inherits a house. The house had belonged to her mother, who in fact lived long into Janet's adulthood. In a state of shock she travels north with the key: and finds an old stone cottage at the sea's edge. She presumes it will be empty. It is not.
Tom was raised by his mother, travelling from one place to another, never settling, his only stability the stories she told him - stories of shapeshifters, danger, impossible love. Now he hides away in an old stone cottage at the sea's edge, waiting for the woman he knows will come.
Here is a world of truth and terror, where lives and stories become so interwoven that in the end, all distinctions are lost. Janet and Tom are possessed by their stories: can they possess each other, too?
Erica Wagner's charged prose pulses with an intensity that will leave the reader breathless. This long-awaited first novel will establish her as one of the most powerful literary voices of her generation.
From the Publisher
`Seizure is terrific. Intense and not like anything else except Wuthering Heights.' Philip Pullman
About the Author
Erica Wagner was born in New York City. She is the author of Gravity: Stories (Granta) and Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters (Faber). She lives in London, where she is the Literary Editor of The Times.
